June 1, 2006

I don’t know if it happened because I was in a hurry, or because, at the time of the incident, I was suffering through listening to excerpts of Hillary’s senatorial nomination acceptance. Perhaps it was both.

In any event, it wasn’t one of those little nicks that you don’t even notice until you’re finished shaving. No, I knew instantly by the pain in the region between my upper lip and nose that I had done some unintended facial surgery on myself.

The damned cut began to bleed immediately. I did the direct pressure thing, using toilet paper, of course, but it would not stop. I couldn’t just stand there all damned morning smooshing a wad of toilet paper against my lip. So, I then tore off a patch of toilet paper and just plastered it against the bleeding gash, thereby freeing up my hands to continue with the get-ready-for-work routine. The toilet paper patch now looked like a miniature Japanese flag on my upper lip, but it seemed to stem the blood tide long enough to permit me to brush my teeth, brush my great farookin’ hair and get dressed for work.

There was no way I wanted to show up at work with a bloody patch of toilet paper on my moosh, so I tried to carefully remove it from the gash. Ouch! This only served to re-open the self-inflicted wound. It appeared that this cut was about ready to volunteer to bleed all damned day, and I could not hang around home and wait for it to stop. I had to leave for work.

I then remembered a remedy I had used a few years ago on such an occasion. I ran a tiny bit of tap water over a tea bag and took it with me in the car where I pressed it against the bleeding hole in my face, hoping that it would stop the bleeding within the forty minutes or so it would take me to get to work.

The bleeding stopped within two blocks of my house. Amazing. That’s the way it worked the last time I tried it on a nasty cut. I learned about this useful property of the pedestrian tea bag years ago by reading this book, in which the author (an intern in an emergency room) managed to stop what appeared by be an intractable nosebleed** on a patient by using a tea bag — a remedy taught to him not in medical school, but by his Jewish mother.

The good news was that I was no longer bleeding. The bad news was that I had to go through the day with a scab on my lip that looks like a big ol’ nasty booger.

**The Tea Bag Treatment did not stop this guy’s nosebleed at Eric’s house in Tennessee, but I think that’s because I failed to remember that he probably should have wet the tea bag more and let those strong tea-drippings wend their way into his nose. My bad.

Note (Not that it’s all that noteworthy): As I was trying to keep from bleeding to death by holding a wad of asswipe against my lip, I was wishing I had an old-fashioned styptic pencil, which is a pre-historic widget that looks like a pointed piece of chalk that one uses to stop bleeding from razor nicks and cuts. My father used one, and I had one a zillion years ago. I wondered whether one can still buy a styptic pencil, and it turns out that they are still available. I’ll be buying one this week, but it probably won’t beat the Trusty Tea Bag when it comes to nasty bleeds.